Dollhouse

 

This article is about the location. For the music piece, see "Dollhouses".

Dollhouse
Location	Northwestern hemisphere
First appearance	Chapter 5
Dress gained	Misstitched
Series	Alice: Madness Returns
Location on map
Further information Transcript Transcript Walkthrough Walkthrough
Image gallery (24)

“

Am I not the most wretched and selfish of fortune's fools? Oblivious, I live in a training ground for prostitutes; my mentor is an abuser and purveyor; I've been complicit with my sister's murderer, and the killer of my family, as he corrupted my mind! I sought relief from my pain and you turned me away from the truth! — Alice Liddell to the Dollmaker upon meeting him

”

The Dollhouse was a domain of Wonderland that was a colorful, childlike town made from life-size doll houses. It became a dark, abandoned, defiled wasteland and the lair of the monstrous Dollmaker who resided in a towering workshop looming over the domain in the horizon. Alice Liddell had to defeat a series of dolls and puzzles to reach the heart of the new corruption of Wonderland. The dollhouse symbolizes Alice's loss of innocence and contains themes of identity.

History

Alice: Madness Returns

The Insane Child warning Alice of the Dollmaker.

After Alice escaped the hallucination of Rutledge Asylum, she found herself in Hyde Park. She also found a wounded Insane Child who warned her about the new evil that overpowered the Queen of Hearts. The child died shortly after, leaving Alice to encounter a mirage of her house on fire.

She was then transported to the Dollhouse, where she met the Insane Child Leader. The leader asked for her help, as well as kept her up-to-date with Wonderland's situation albeit in a cryptic manner. However, the approaching Doll Girl prevented the Insane Children's leader from continuing further and forced the group to hide.

Alice finally meeting the Dollmaker.

When Alice reached the end of the Dollhouse, she met the Dollmaker, an incarnation of Dr. Bumby in Wonderland. The Insane Children were the incarnations of the Houndsditch children, who became his sinister dolls, and in the real world, his child prostitutes. Her eyes are opened to the monster he was and the abuse she and children everywhere had suffered at his hands, including her own sister. It became Alice's sworn duty to punish him for his deeds.

Appearance

Upper area

One of the rooms in the upper part of the Dollhouse.

The upper part of the world had many colorful districts. Most of the houses were detachable and able to form new paths for Alice. They also had vibrant interiors like pictures, plushies, and wooden blocks. Some of the furniture inside the house had messages written on them and most were decorated with blood.

The domain had huge dolls in several areas that acted as pathways, while dolls on the swings that were covered with protruding nails acted as obstacles for Alice. There were also a large amount of discarded doll parts found in almost every area of the Dollhouse.

Underground area

The underworld of the Dollhouse.

The underground part of the Dollhouse was almost the exact opposite of the upper part and acted more like a prison than a haven. There was a lack of color in the area and the lack of childlike furniture. There were morbid depictions of dolls, glass cages containing different horrific objects, wax figures, meat, nails, screws and knives. There were huge piles of junk like damaged baby dolls and skeletons in the basement and breakable objects became porcelain baby doll heads.

Locations

• Fort Resistance
• Dolltown (in underworld)
• Dollmaker's Workshop

Residents and creatures

• Bitch Baby
• Colossal Ruin
• Dollmaker
• Doll Girl
• Drifting Ruin
• Insane Children
• Insidious Ruin
• Menacing Ruin

Trivia

A piece reminiscent of the Dollhouse domain by Mark Ryden.

• The Dollhouse is primarily inspired by the work of Mark Ryden, who is known for creating pictures of innocent, young girls in abstract atmospheres. Similarities include children with abnormally large eyes, vibrant pastel coloring, mixtures of animal meat and children, re-use of singular eyes (possibly all-seeing eyes) and many other intricate, abstract art.
• The underground cellars portion of the dollhouse appears to be influenced by Jan Svankmajer's Alice, including visual elements such as meat, knives and skeletons.
• In certain places for the Dollhouse, there are huge storybooks with Humpty Dumpty and the Jabberwock as they appear in Through the Looking-Glass on the covers.
• There are three dead mice with dark glasses in a jar. It could be a reference to the three blind mice from the popular nursery rhyme.
• There is also a skeleton-cat with a large top-hat, which is probably a reference to Dr. Seuss' Cat in The Hat.
• There are doll heads with alchemical and astrological symbols on their forehead in some of the shelves found in various houses.
• There are dolls representing the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit in certain places around the Dollhouse.
• An enemy planned for the Dollhouse that was cut from the final version, the Toy Soldier, can be seen in the Extra Content section, as well as several locations around the Dollhouse. Two such appearances are in Frog's Way, once just after leaving Fort Resistance, and again when collecting cubes for the picture puzzle.
  • Another planned enemy that was scrapped was the Dog Baby, originally meant as a pet for Doll Girl. Although its combat was scrapped, it can be seen somewhere in the Underground section of the Dollhouse and can be seen in the Extra Content.
• Giant versions of both Doll Girl heads can be found in the Dollhouse, mostly near Fort Resistance, and in Frog's Way, Snail's Trail, and associated locations.

Hints of child prostitution.

• There are many heavily scarring hints about child prostitution in this level serving as foreshadowing the player, such as:

• entering a doll's crotch area as a door (Frog's Way)
• pictures of dolls or children with a price in the corner indicating some sort of sale (like Bumby selling them as sex toys for pedophiles, and, most likely, abusing them himself),
• beds soaked with blood (representing hard and painful sexual intercourse, and in, sadly, many cases, raping to the point of bleeding)
• pictures of eyes on everything (symbolizing voyeurism, or, in some cases as it has been called, pornography)
• levers becoming grotesque contraptions involving eyes and a mouth on a stick
• statues of babies in perverse sexual positions
• a lamp made of a leg
• a chair with legs as an armrest
• mirrors with SAVE US on them

• The dollhouse the orphans were playing with in the lobby of Houndsditch looks exactly similar to the houses present during the Dollhouse domain.